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You Want My Personal Data? Reward Me for It

Ian Wilkes, left, and Ginsu Yoon are the founders of Bynamite, which is testing software that monitors what ad networks and Web sites collect and assume to know about a user.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

LIFE, as they say, imitates art. And the way things work commercially today across much of the Web recalls that chapter in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” where Tom cajoles his guileless friends into whitewashing Aunt Polly’s fence. They supply the labor, but he gets the reward.

On the Internet, users supply the raw material that helps generate billions of dollars a year in online advertising revenue. Search requests, individual profiles on social networks, Web browsing habits, posted pictures and many Internet messages are all mined to serve up targeted online ads.

All of this personal information turns out to be extremely valuable, collectively. So why should Google, Yahoo, Facebook and other ad businesses get all the rewards?

That is the question that animates Bynamite, a start-up company based in San Francisco. “There should be an economic opportunity on the consumer side,” said Ginsu Yoon, a co-founder of the company. “Nearly all the investment and technology is on the advertising side.”

Bynamite, to be sure, is another entry in the emerging market for online privacy products. The business interest in such products, of course, is being fed by worries about how much personal information marketers collect. Also playing a part are recent outcries after Facebook changed its privacy practices and Google introduced a social networking tool, Buzz, that initially shared information widely without users’ permission. Venture capital has been pouring into Web-based monitoring and privacy protection products like ReputationDefender and Abine, as well as services that help parents protect children’s privacy online, like SafetyWeb and SocialShield.

Bynamite brings a somewhat different perspective to the privacy market. “Our view is that it’s not about privacy protection but about giving users control over this valuable resource — their information,” Mr. Yoon said.

Both the protection and the value approaches to the privacy market could well pay off, says Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm. “What’s intriguing about Bynamite,” he said, “is its emphasis on privacy as revolving around choice and ownership of data, and ultimately a notion of an exchange of value.” (Kleiner Perkins is an investor in ReputationDefender but not in Bynamite.)

Although Bynamite is a tiny start-up, it points toward larger issues about privacy transactions and pricing of personal data. “In reality, we constantly make transactions involving our personal information,” said Alessandro Acquisti, an associate professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Every search on Google, Mr. Acquisti notes, is implicitly such a transaction, involving a person “selling” personal information and “buying” search results. But people do not think about, or are unaware of, the notion that typed search requests help determine the ads that Google displays and what its ad network knows about them.

Bynamite, Mr. Acquisti said, is “simply trying to make these kinds of transactions explicit, more transparent to the user.”

Last week, Bynamite introduced an early, or beta, version of its software, a downloadable plug-in for browsers. That software and its Web service monitor what ad networks and e-commerce sites collect and assume to know about a user. A user’s interests are then assembled on a Web page, grouped by categories like “news and current events,” “general health,” “travel,” “technology” and “shopping.” The categories are weighted by how often you visit different categories of sites or make purchases at some online merchants.

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The information tracked by Bynamite is steadily updated, and, at least for me last week, a small pop-up alert at the bottom of my computer screen appeared every day, informing me of new information about me from ad networks. Mr. Yoon calls the product’s early version mainly a “mirror,” showing users how the commercial Internet sees them.

Users can change that mirror to represent their interests more accurately. For example, I don’t own a car, but my “automotive” folder soon had several entries, saying I was interested in Mercedes-Benz and other brands, presumably because middle-age men who visit the Web sites I do are typically attractive targets for car ads. I deleted the auto interests, suggesting to advertisers that I’m not necessarily a good prospect. Still, I saw a few car ads on sites I later visited.

Bynamite is by no means anti-advertising. It does not block ads. Its Web site recommends free tools, like AdBlock and NoScript, for people who want ads blocked.

In essence, the company has a libertarian, free-market ethos. If consumers have more power and control, it says, personal information should flow more efficiently to the benefit of both consumers and advertisers, who will be able to more accurately aim their ads.

Like most start-ups, Bynamite faces long odds. To succeed, it must be easy to use, and users must trust it as a reliable middleman handling their data. It has no business model yet, though it could offer product recommendations, based on interests, and collect fees on resulting sales from merchants. It hasn’t ruled out accepting ads itself. To start, its free plug-in software works only on Mozilla and Chrome browsers.

IF Bynamite gains momentum, Mr. Yoon predicts that individuals will be able to use their portfolios of interests as virtual currency. He calls the idea a “consumer’s preference wallet.”

Mr. Yoon and his co-founder, Ian Wilkes, are former business and engineering managers at Second Life, the online community where trading virtual currency for digital goods is common.

In a few years, Mr. Yoon says, a person’s profile of interests could be the basis for micropayments or discounts. A media company, for example, might charge a monthly subscription fee of $10 for news or entertainment programming, but offer it for $8 to those who exchanged their preference wallets.

The discount, in theory, would be justified because advertisers would pay more to market to people whose interests they knew precisely and thus were more likely to buy.

“I may be wrong about the product and our company,” Mr. Yoon said. “But I’m absolutely convinced that the direction is right, giving people a way to identify and use this store of value that is their personal information.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 18, 2010, on Page BU3 of the New York edition with the headline: You Want My Personal Data? Reward Me for It. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe